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Anna Filosofova, 1837-1912
In the 19th century, women's movements were active in many countries. In Paris, George Sand was strutting about like a dandy in men's clothing, shocking even the literary elite with her independent behavior. In England and America, suffragettes were beginning to demand the impossible - that women be given the vote.
All of this was unexpected and shocking. Suffice it to recall the passage in Gone with the Wind, where the doctor felt he did not need to warn Scarlett about drinking when she was pregnant: "Of course, there were unfortunate women who drank, to the eternal disgrace of their families, just as there were women who were insane or divorced or who believed, with Miss Susan B. Anthony, that women should have the vote. But as much as the doctor disapproved of Scarlett, he never suspected her of drinking."
Tilings were no different in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. "The short-haired nihilist girl," her fingers stained with ink, became a frightening symbol of moral decline. It was staggering, the number of women in terrorist organizations, fomenting peasant rebellions, among wild-eyed revolutionary emigrants and political exiles. It seemed as if it was women - very young women - who wanted more than anyone to turn the world upsidedown. They would leave their families and enter into fictitious marriages, the only purpose of which was to tree them from the authority of their father. They would smear ink on their dresses or throw themselves into the study ot the natural sciences, enthusiastically dissecting frogs. They founded communes or refused out of principle to pour tea or extend their hands to be kissed. And they would throw bombs in the name of the coming revolution.
These scandalous images often...